Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Drawmack" data-source="post: 316879" data-attributes="member: 4981">First I am in no way affiliated with PCGen or WotC.Okay, to address the issue of PI. What you're saying is that since many of the d20 publishers released their information in pdf format and a good amount for free (i.e. Bastion Press) that it would be leagal for me to take their PI and redistribute it in word format that's not the case. Here's the dealPCGen is third party software that is released under the open source GPL. Of which a copy can be found here <a href="http://www.opensourcerers.com/gpl.html" target="_blank">http://www.opensourcerers.com/gpl.html</a>. This means that all copyrights to the software and associated files are in the public domain. Therefor if they include lst files with PI and a company knowingly and willfully allows this to continue then they give up the rights to that PI.E-Tools is a piece of software produced for and by WotC and sold to their fan base. This being the case WotC can distribute their PI in their program's proprietary format without  without giving up said PI. It boils down to this they own the PI and the program so they can do whatever they want with those two things and you need to deal with it.As far as reverse engineering the software goes. E-Tools runs on top of an access database. As such, they cannot possibly back up this assertion as technically MS reverse engineered their database before it was even built. They use a commercial database engine to create their database, they cannot say that I am not allowed to open their database inside of that engine. Therefor I can create my own compatible database, then create a front end for that database and then do with that what ever I like. Besides if someone besides me installs the software on my PC then I have not agreed to the lisense. So I'll have my GF install the software then I'm not bound by any agreement. It boils down to this, reverse engineering is legal because you can't make it illegal because you can't prove it. Besides all that, the files are not software any more then a word doc is software.</blockquote>

Verification